The Minimal Set of Electroweak Precision Parameters

We present a simple method for analyzing the impact of precision electroweak data above and below the Z-peak on flavour-conserving heavy new physics. We find that experiments have probed about ten combinations of new physics effects, which to a good approximation can be condensed into the effective oblique parameters Shat, That, Uhat, V, X, W, Y (we prove positivity constraints W, Y >= 0) and three combinations of quark couplings (including a distinct parameter for the bottom). We apply our method to generic extra Z' vectors.